episode 1

Hi, my name’s Johnson and I’m feeling stuck. I’ve come to a cross-roads in my career: keep going the way I am and remain unfulfilled or strike out and do what I enjoy.

I’ve always considered myself a marketer with a bit of an entrepreneurial edge. In reality, I’m a desk monkey that answers phone calls and sends the occasional email.

I’m the mate who could talk your ear off about marketing, why that expensive ad on TV won’t work and why your idea probably won’t take off. I’m that consultant that never was.

This year is my high school’s 10 year reunion. I don’t think there’s going to be much of a reunion on account of a little something called Facebook keeping everyone up to date with everyone, but that isn’t the point.

The point is that I’m turning 28 and have been spinning my wheels but going no where for the last decade of my life… and I’m disappointed in myself. 18 year old me would be disappointed if he could peep into the future and see the mess that I am.

But no more feeling sorry for myself – I don’t get that luxury. I know what I can do and I’m setting out to do change. This blog is going to keep track of it. Yes, it will be about content marketing but not tactics or techniques per se. It’s more of a log to help me stay accountable to myself. I’m not really going to promote it either so if anyone does find it, I guess I’ll thank the Google gods.

What I’m Going To Be Doing

I love marketing and entrepreneurship but I have nothing substantial to show for it. That’s my biggest problem. To solve this, I’m going to start a blog from scratch and use content marketing to drive traffic to it. I’ll build a list, turn it into an authority blog then see where it goes from there.

This is inspired by Benji Hyam and what he did at GrowAndConvert.com with Devesh Khanal. It’s going to be a little different to their challenge in the following ways:

I’m not targeting the marketing audience.

I’ll be writing about a topic that I am unfamiliar with.

I’ll be doing this while still working a full-time job.

Their goal was to grow to 40,000 users in 6 months and a list of 10,000 people. I’m not sure what my goal is going to be yet, but I will be using their frameworks and methodologies to grow my blog.

What’s My Blog Going To Be About?

I’m not ashamed to say that I want my blog to become profitable in the not-too-distant future. As to what time frame this refers to, I’ll know once I get started. Like many people, I have started blogs on topics before and failed.

Last year, I created an e-magazine that I cobbled together from articles I found online, but it didn’t really have an audience. I made a few hundred bucks out of it, but the lack of direction drained me. I didn’t know who I was writing to. I had no purpose.

This time, it’s going to be different. I’m in it to generate significant value for my audience, so the topic will have to be something that is related to an expensive problem in their life. I wanted to challenge myself and learn some interesting stuff in the process so eventually, I settled on creating a blog about becoming an executive.

Why “Becoming An Executive?”

Firstly, I’ll reiterate that I’m in this to make something valuable for myself. One thing is to help me become a more formidable content marketer. This will be form a portfolio of mine. The second thing is that this blog can become a digital asset of sorts which can be sold based on the quality of its traffic, maybe to people who are currently paying for the traffic through AdWords.

I’m not after “junk” traffic. I’m not a “how to get rich quick” writer or “make money online” blogger. I’m solving real problems that people are advertising their solutions for. People who have worked to a point in their lives where they feel they’re ready to join the C-suite and get a significant boost in their income could be navigating uncharted waters. They could be looking for the right opportunities and don’t know where to start.

Real businesses are bidding on keywords, spending $1,000’s on them to solve people’s problems:

courtesy of spyfu.com

There is an itch that needs to be scratched. There is also an opportunity for content marketers to create trust in the market through helpful, well-researched content that meets them where they are.

Most content tends to be broad-brush, aiming for accolades rather than answers and shares rather than serving. That’s not to say that’s it’s not important to have those things, but by focusing on “vanity metrics”, you attract the wrong audience. Again, I’m in it to turn the blog into something profitable.

That’s why the content I’ll aim to produce will be meaty. There will be no place for fluff or puffery. I want to build a community of people who are spending their waking moments anxiously wondering how they’ll make the jump to executive life and what to expect from it.

The Final Word

The title of this post is The 180 Day 180. It’s a term I first heard from Perry Marshall, a marketing consultant based out of Chicago who I respect. He isn’t shy about sharing his struggles early in his career. He coined this term to describe the breakthrough period in his life where, in the space of six months, he was able to do a 180 with his working and personal life. Where he was struggling to sell anything, he was suddenly getting the largest commission cheques of his life. Where his credit cards were completely exhausted, he suddenly had disposable income.

I’m not expecting a lot to change from my 180 Day 180. But I’ll set this goal: I want 10,000 monthly users to my new website and a list of 1,000 subscribers by the end of six months. Yes, those figures are plucked out of the air. I am basing them a bit from what Benji and Devesh were able to do. If I can do a fraction of what they did with G&C, I would be happy.